Envisioning the Future of Digital Identity in Convenience Retail

CTVG June 13 2025 Meeting Transcript

Meeting Facilitator

• Ed Collupy, Principal, Collupy System Solutions LLC

CTVG Member Participants:

• Roy Austin, Director, Information Technology, Graham Enterprise, Inc.
• Sanjit Bajimaya, IT DIR, Loop Neighborhood
• Jeffrey Carpenter, Director, Cliff’s Local market
• Jason Collins, Director of IT, Englefield Inc
• Steve Evans, Chief Technology Officer, Haffner’s
• Janeth Falcon, VP North America Technology, Circle K
• Raymond Huff, President HJB Convenience
• Sharif Jamal, Director of Real Estate and Brand Development, Chestnut Market
• Steve Morris, Owner / President, Retail Management Inc
• Abhi Patel, VP Info Technology, Operations, Nouria
• Donnie Rhoads, Director of Business Development, The Convenience Group, LLC
• Bill Ridge, VP of Technology, Eastern Petroleum Company
• Rance Wells, Vice President of IT, Toot’n Totum Food Stores, LLC

Presenter

• Christina Hulka, Executive Director, Secure Technology Alliance

Ally Supporters

• Robert Green, Sales Director, GK Software
• Bill Miller, Vice President – Head of Sales, GK Software

Vision Group Network

• Myra Kressner, Founder, Kressner Strategy Group
• Eva Strasburger, President, StrasGlobal
• Roy Strasburger, CEO, StrasGlobal
• Robert Hampton, VGN Director Strategic Growth & Initiatives

Meeting:

Ed Collupy:

Hello, everybody. Ed Collupy here and welcome to our latest Convenience Technology Vision Group session. It’s great to see and be with all of you today. We’ve got a fascinating discussion ahead of us — the “Future of Payments” — thanks to our guest, Christina Hulka, who I’ll introduce in just a bit. What’s next in payments sits right at the intersection of retailing, privacy, fintech, and emerging tech, especially when it comes to related topics, such as digital identity for payments and mobile driver’s licenses. With mobile or digital wallets becoming the norm and governments pushing forward with digital IDs, we’re entering an era where proving who we are is and certainly will be as seamless as tapping our phones. As always, I’m looking forward to hearing from each of you, our members, today. The insights that you share and that arise out of our CTVG meeting become important points for fellow peers and industry observers to learn from and consider.

This screenshot [Publication & Antitrust Statement Shown on Screen] serves all of us as a reminder of the antitrust statement and publication acknowledgments that CTVG members and our guests have signed.

As always, we are recording this afternoon’s discussion, so please use your camera and keep it on as much as possible. Remember to mute yourselves unless you are speaking, so that we’re not all disturbed by what might be going on around you. Also, be open to share and participate with candid and diverse points of view. On that note, if you want to make an “off-the-record” comment, just let us know that what you’re going to say or what you have said is off the record. We appreciate the time you take with us each quarter, and we also always miss the voices of fellow members that have a scheduling conflict and are not with us today. They’ve all said to say hello and await reading about our meeting today in the next Vision Report.

I’d like to welcome Robert Hampton back to our CTVG meeting. Robert, you’ll remember, was one of our charter members, and he is now doing some technology consulting, but most importantly, he’s working with the Vision Group Network to develop some exciting new programs, one of which he’s here to tell us about. Robert, take it away.

Robert Hampton:

Thank you, Ed. Good afternoon, everyone. As Ed mentioned, I’m doing some consulting within the technology and convenience space, and I’ve been working with my colleagues here at Vision Group Network to develop some exciting new programs. With that, we’re happy to announce the very first Vision Group Network Virtual Global Summit. At this Summit, we will be bringing together members and supporters from all seven Vision Groups on November 19th at 11:00 AM Eastern time. We expect close to 100 participants in this virtual gathering. We have an exciting agenda, including Gerd Leonhard (a German futurist, speaker and author who specializes in the debate between humanity and technology) as our keynote speaker, as well as reports from all seven Vision Groups from all over the world. You’ll be able to hear the findings and insights from your peers and colleagues from foodservice, EV, leadership, and others. Look for an invitation to hold the date with a link to the landing page very soon, likely next week. Again, this is November 19th, 11:00 AM Eastern time. More information to come, and we look forward to seeing you all there. Back to you, Ed.

Ed Collupy:

Thanks, Robert. The Summit sounds like a great gathering of members from all the groups that the Vision Group Network has engaged across industries and, as you said, across the world. Thanks for the work you’re doing to pull that together. Myra, I believe you’ve got some news for our members as well about updates that are being made to the Vision Reports.

Myra Kressner:

Yes, thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Robert. We are delighted that you’re working with us and have crafted a phenomenal Global Summit. Again, it’s virtual and it will be three hours, so in terms of the time commitment, it starts at 11:00 AM eastern until 2:00 PM. A lot more on that to come. Some of you may have seen a change that we made recently to the delivery of our Vision Reports, and we’re really pleased that we have made this change in our Vision Reports. Formerly, they were all in a PDF format. What we’re doing now is we’re making them much more interactive, in that they will be delivered in Flipping Books, which will include the “Views” summary, which we’re all used to seeing. But what’s different now is that there will be a link to the transcript, which will actually be searchable and interactive.

We’re also going to provide a video recording of Christina’s presentation.

Again, we think this is much more user-friendly. You will see the report in about four weeks, picking up some time in the delivery of our Vision Reports. So you’ll continue to get the embargoed version, which we’ll then turn around in a couple of days to publish the report, which again we encourage you to share with your colleagues. Give us feedback, please, once it comes out with this new format. Robert, did I forget to mention anything important about that?

Robert Hampton:

I think you covered it.

Myra Kressner:

Okay, good. Thanks.

Ed Collupy:

Thank you, Myra. As we get underway, I’d ask you to please remember to use the raised-hand icon as often as possible for conversation, and I’ll work to call on you in order. If you find yourself in a back-and-forth discussion, please keep that flow going. That’s what creates good dialogue among us. If you happen to step away or need to step away, you can either write a short note in the chat or just leave and return when you’re able.

Let’s open today’s session with a quick Lightning Round building on our last meeting and the Vision Report, “Pivotal Moments in Foodservice Technology”. This is your time to surface what’s shifted for you and your company in the foodservice arena since our last conversation. As a reminder, we’re looking for short reflections that reflect on topics that were raised, including interoperability challenges, especially as retailers try to unify point of sale, loyalty, and foodservice ordering and delivery systems, including kiosks, mobile ordering, drive-thrus and delivery options, all things we talked about the last time, and each with their own implementation challenges.

Foodservice Steve Morris, who hasn’t quite joined us yet, mentioned to the group during our discussion that he was moving forward with UpDog, the roller grill management system. If he happens to join us in a bit, we’ll let him chime in, but he still hasn’t implemented it yet with all else that he has going on with his business. Just as an update if you were curious about that.

Who has done anything since the meeting in foodservice or introduced something new at your companies regarding foodservice or foodservice tech? Donnie?

Donnie Rhoads:

Yes. Hey, everybody. I’m going to jump right in. I remember our conversation and, like you said, Ed, one of the biggest pain points for us when thinking about third-party solutions that provide more fluidity and ease of ordering for our customers is getting the integrations for our point of sale, and we think we found the right service to set up kiosks for our foodservice arms of our stores that will also play well with our back-office software and online ordering, that kind of thing. We’re hopeful and we’re going to be moving forward with that soon, but there’s certainly a lot of options out there. It feels a little bit like the Wild West still.

Ed Collupy:

Donnie, is it something you want to share or who you’re using?

Donnie Rhoads:

Yes. Ignite Retail Technology is our back office, so we use their Profit Central, and Vroom Delivery, which is their online ordering partner — they are rolling out kiosks of their own. We’re excited to give it a try.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Thanks for the update and the news on how you’re moving things forward on foodservice. Anybody else tried something new, implemented something new on foodservice? New food product, something yummy, something good for summer? Somebody must have something. Jeff?

Jeff Carpenter:

I’ll add to Donnie’s comment. I don’t know if we’ll be moving forward with it or at least in the near future, but we got to check out Vroom. Vroom also offers a kitchen-facing tablet or interface, I should say, that we had the opportunity to look at, as those orders are coming through, if you have a dedicated food operation to manage those orders as well, which was a nice presentation. Along the lines of food products, we’ve got a bunch of new stuff coming. We brought in new protein, pulled pork, and have all kinds of good stuff coming to partner with that, like strawberry shortcake. We do a lot of watermelon bowls in the summer, so just looking forward to the warm weather.

Ed Collupy:

I hear you on that front. Donnie, did you have a comment?

Donnie Rhoads:

Yes, I second on what Jeff just said. I can’t believe we got it, to be honest. The other thing we’re really excited about is the kitchen management system aspect of it, which is another solution, like Jeff said, that they’re providing. That was another one. It’s just getting orders to the back and to our teammates in a clean way that ties together. We’re just looking for that ecosystem that plays together and seems like Vroom might have the solution for us.

Ed Collupy:

Good. Anyone else on foodservice just to round things out here? Well, I expect that we’ll see more pivotal moments. especially as foodservice technologies continue to evolve. If you recall, one of our speakers last time was Rob Grimes. He is going to be curating the Food Retail Innovation Zone at the NRF big show again in January, so I expect, based on some preview I’ve had of that, that there will even be newer things for not only convenience, but for really what’s becoming food in all types of retail establishments. The competitive nature of food just continues to grow and you can see it, as Rob said.

Let’s move on. I’m again thrilled to be joined today by Christina Hulka, who is the executive director at the Secure Technology Alliance, of which the US Payments Forum is a part. Christina has led collaborative efforts across public and private sectors to advance trusted identity and secure technology adoption. She’s a thought leader on topics ranging from digital credentials to secure payments and has deep insights into where identity and commerce are headed. She’ll lead us off with a presentation on the “Future of Payments”.

When I think of payments, it brings me back just a few years to when I first implemented debit card payments, before credit card payments, at a grocery chain, and it really led the way for a new payment methodology method for the supermarket industry. Also, to think how the convenience/mobility industry led the way with self-service payments at the gas pump is pretty amazing. Both of those, as I look back, paved the way for even more current-day payment methods — ACH (Automated Clearing House), mobile, pay-ahead and tap.

But the “what’s next” in payments is clearly on the radar for Christina and the work that her association is doing. The shift from physical to digital credentials and the convergence of mobile wallets, payments, and identity is a game-changer. It comes with challenges — privacy and security considerations while finding the balance between convenience and control.

We are fortunate to be the first audience to hear key takeaways from the Secure Technology Alliance’s Identity and Payments Summit that was held a couple of months back. Let’s listen in to learn where we’re headed and how your companies and the industry could be on the forefront of payments. Christina, please, let’s hear from you.

Christina Hulka:

[Slide #1 – Secure Technology Alliance] Thank you, Ed. Thank you very much for having me. I’m excited to be here. Ed mentioned that you’re my first audience to hear this presentation. I know that I have a few engagements coming up where the question was being asked about, “Where do we see the future of payments going?” I knew I had to pull a deck together and then I thought, “Well, how do I go about doing this?” I took a look back, so we had our Identity and Payment Summit earlier this year. It’s our largest event of the year and brings together a multitude of people from across all kinds of industries. I took a look at what was talked about there, and it sort of became this framework for the presentation I’ve built today. I’m really, really looking forward to your responses, your reactions, and your feedback and your thoughts. This is where we see the future. There are so many things we can talk about in the context of payments that we could think about this in multiple different ways.

This is really where I see things going from my world and the trends that are emerging as we think about payments, digital identity, and other technologies that are evolving faster than we can really imagine in some cases.

Data Cybersecurity[Slide #2 – Emerging Fraud Threats] This is something I think that we’re all aware of. Anybody that’s involved in retail, anyone that’s involved in payments, these are statistics that we see on a regular basis. Fraud is always a big conversation for everybody. When I was looking at some of these statistics, I was actually quite blown away how, over half of us receive suspicious messages and online scams. Over half of organizations face phishing scams weekly. 1.2% of all emails are malicious. These are quite shocking statistics, and then when you throw AI on top of that, it’s way more affordable than humans coming up with these scams, and it is incredibly cheap to buy these tools online.

As it says at the bottom here, ‘fraud-as-a-service’ tools are available for as little as $300, and deep fake technology requires only 60 seconds of recorded audio to create synthetic voices that are convincing, so they sound like somebody that you know and you care about. These are all quite shocking and scary statistics, and I’m sure that everybody in this call has experienced some kind of scam and, hopefully, you’ve noticed it and ignored it or deleted it, reported it, but it resonates with everybody, because we’re all targets for this type of threat. It’s a problem. It’s a problem for the industry. The industry is losing billions of dollars. Certainly, in my world, in my organization, this is a huge topic for us and something that we are really focusing on.

We are watching what the government is doing. I just saw a press release this week, they’re announcing that there’s a desire to form a task force to address payments fraud, something that is of interest, and we’d love to get involved in and see how we can help address the problem.

Digital Infrastructure [Slide #3 – Rise of digital credentials] Another huge trend is the rise of digital credentials, and this is not just in payments, but across the board. You see a lot of conversations around, “How do we truly know that we are dealing with the person, the authentic person, the person that they say they are?” Over the years, there’s been conversations around something you know, something you have, multifactor authentication, but this is really now a time when we are seeing a lot of momentum around digital credentials, especially post-pandemic, where we saw a lot of activities going online, because we couldn’t meet in person anymore. Things like opening a bank account, things like getting a driver’s license, things like making a payment. They’re all things where digital credentials are starting to evolve and become more prevalent in how people think about how to identify that genuine person, and that ties into the fraud threats, because with artificial intelligence, you can create a fake voice that sounds very convincing, you can create a fake face that looks very convincing, so you need to have more information about the person that you are addressing to ensure that that is the valid person. On this slide here, you see just some interesting statistics. I found them interesting. When you look at the digital identity and solutions in existence, a majority of them are biometric, because that makes it unique to a specific person.

Who people trust for digital identity, probably not surprising that the graph looks like this, but the conversation around how banks can facilitate that centralized identity, they’re the ones who effectively have the regulated processes in place to be able to identify their customers, and they could probably expand that role further into other areas. Found it very interesting, when you talk about people who know what digital identity means, the United States is lagging in that perspective, even behind the global rates. I think largely because we have such an established infrastructure already that it makes it harder to move into that realm of innovation and establishing a new infrastructure with the digital identities, because we are so ingrained in terms of what we do. Whereas other countries, starting effectively with a blank slate, can move directly to this digital infrastructure that we would all like to see globally.

Cybersecurity[Slide #4 – Why is this important] This is all great information, not great in terms of the numbers you see on the first slide with the fraud, but why is it important for payments? If you think back to the early 2000s and even before that in other parts of the world, the world moved to chip, EMV chip migration happened, because there was a huge increase in skimming rates and some lost and stolen fraud. The solution to that was to bring a cryptographically-authenticated transaction, which can be done with a chip card, as opposed to just a magstripe card. Then in some cases, in some parts of the world, using a PIN to prevent the lost and stolen fraud. That very, very successfully addressed skimming and lost and stolen fraud, and of course, the fraudsters found other ways to move to other weaker parts of the ecosystem, card-not-present transactions. This is where the digital credentials come in to the payments industry to talk about how we can address that fraud challenge that we see.

These digital credentials, they’re not just a picture of your physical ID, they’re actually cryptographically signed and manage to very secure means to make it harder for fraudsters to manipulate the identity verification processes. Real-time authentication, public key infrastructure, the key things here that protect that information and prevent the fraudsters from accessing it. The other thing that’s really key, I see more and more in conversations around these solutions and how we solve for them to be secure and anti-fraud, is it’s also got to be frictionless. If a consumer doesn’t understand how something works, they’ll find ways around it, which will impact the security of that product. When you think about passwords, as an example, we now all have so many passwords it’s impossible to remember all of them, so we either use the same one and again and again, we use a very simple one. That, of course, is a way for fraudsters to get to our personal data and steal our money from our bank accounts.

Consumer Experience It’s really important that, even though we are focused on security and privacy, we also make sure that the solutions that are provided to the consumer are easy to understand and easy to use. That is an imperative as well that we’re also dealing with as we look to solving these fast-evolving issues.

Digital Infrastructure [Slide #5 Mobile driver’s licenses] I want to touch a bit on mobile driver’s licenses, because this is an area that my organization is very focused on right now, and it’s something that that is still pretty new, but once it starts moving, it’s going to move really fast. I live in California and I have a mobile driver’s license on my phone. As I joined this organization a year ago, I found out what we were doing and got very excited about it. I have never used it. I have yet to use that mobile driver’s license. Apparently, I can use it at the airport, but I’m a little intimidated because I don’t quite know how it works. And an airport is a fast-paced environment where you don’t want to hold up everybody behind you. I heard anecdotally from somebody else that you can use it at the airport but after waiting in line, you have to go to another line at the end of the terminal to go through the process. But it’s not really deployed anywhere else.

But there are so many use cases available here. You see on the slide: law enforcement, retail, travel and entertainment, banking, government enterprise and scenarios listed here. There are multiple scenarios where we will be able to use a mobile driver’s license. And what I like about the idea of a mobile driver’s license, instead of showing you a piece of plastic, which basically tells the person that you’re showing it to, a lot of personal details about you including: your address, your weight, and your height, your eye color, all those things, your date of birth. The mobile driver’s license only shows the clerk or whoever it is that you are showing the information to, it only shows them what they need to know. And in the case here of say, age-restricted items, it doesn’t even show them your age. It just says, “Yes, this person is over 18. Yes, this person is over 21.” Whatever is needed for that age-restricted purchase or entering a bar or restaurant. So there’s a lot of use cases here for mobile driver’s licenses. You’re going to start to see them evolving over time.

Consumer Experience [Slide #6 – State of mobile Drivers Licenses] Just a quick snapshot here of where we’re at in the U.S. My organization, the Secure Technology Alliance and the Identity and Access Forum, which focuses on mobile driver’s licenses, cares about making sure that the experience a license holder has is interoperable across all states and ultimately globally. So we don’t want people to be able to use their driver’s license in their home state and be comfortable with it and then go to a neighboring state and it doesn’t work. So that’s where we are really focused on, making sure that we have that interoperability across the country, largely because each state is implementing their own thing. And as you can see here, there are other ways to do things that aren’t necessarily going to be interoperable with the things that we all trying to push for, in the context of making sure that it’s based on an ISO standard (refers to the International Organization for Standardization and its related products), which is how the rest of the world is evolving as well.

Digital Infrastructure [Slide #7 – Digital wallets] And then some other things, just to throw into the mix there. Other things that we talk about — digital wallets, so digital wallets I think are really interesting. We have the technology ‘Tap to Phone’, which enables smartphones to effectively function as payment terminals. And think about the implications of this in the context of merchants who invest in that infrastructure. Is this going to make life much easier? — potentially, yes. What’s even more interesting about this beyond just making a payment, there are other use cases that are evolving, such as activating your newly issued payment card — so you tap your phone with your newly issued card and activate it rather than making a phone call or logging in to your bank’s website. You just tap your card to provision to add your payment card to your digital wallet that’s already on your phone, rather than scanning the front of it with the card number or making a call to your bank, depending on how they’ve set it up.

Also ‘Tap to Authenticate’ for high-risk transactions. So it gives you an extra piece of information as the issuer to make sure that that person is actually in possession of both their digital credential, their tokenized payment on the phone, as well as their actual card. What I find here interesting about these use cases is they all mentioned the word card. I had always thought, fact here: I used to work for Visa, it’s been about eight years since I worked at Visa, and I heard a lot the mantra, “Cards are going to ultimately go away. We’re not going to be issuing plastic cards.” And that might be a reality, but I don’t think it’s a reality in the near future.

I still see card referenced in all of these use cases. So clearly the industry is thinking, “Okay, we are still going to issue cards, we’re going to be using these cards, we’re going to be putting these cards in our wallet, and we’re going to be using them in different ways to make sure that the transactions are verified.” So I thought that was an interesting observation when I was thinking about these use cases.

And then the other thing, which I think is also very interesting because it brings things back to that consumer convenience and speed, merchants focused on making sure that consumers get through the line quickly and things are done efficiently, is being able to present multiple credentials within a single transaction. So you can make a payment and verify your age at the same time. You can earn or use loyalty points while you’re making a purchase. So those types of use cases I think are really interesting because instead of fumbling around for different cards or making multiple presentations to the terminal, this is all just going to happen in one quick motion.

And then the other point here is that the integration of digital payment credentials within wallets does enhance both convenience and privacy. And this again, very important points for how we think about the future of payments. There are things that are important to consumers. There are things that are important to us as people building solutions. They only share information that’s required for the transaction. You don’t need to share information that is not relevant to that transaction and it speeds up, makes much more efficient, that transaction. And it’s simple to use for the consumer. They know how to make that payment transaction. They’re not rummaging around for their loyalty card or their ID.

Cybersecurity[Slide #8 – Other things] And then other things to think about. So these are less front of mind, but there are things going on in the background that are still important and still potentially good questions to ask as you are thinking about how you are evolving your payments platforms. Post-quantum cryptography: so the industry has talked about this for many years now and talked about the implications of what the introduction of quantum computers means. They can break current cryptographic algorithms, which means that a lot of the cryptography that we use today is going to be vulnerable to those fraudsters. We have been talking about it for a long time. It’s now time to act. It’s time to have those conversations. NIST (National Institute of Systems & Technology) published the algorithms that they defined as post-quantum cryptographic. They’re ready to implement today and they defend against post-quantum cryptography or the quantum computers. So people should be implementing today, people who are deploying solutions should be thinking about it today.

It’s important to think about crypto agility. So we don’t know how this is going to evolve, so we need to make sure that our solutions are flexible and strong. Attackers are adopting a ‘harvest now decrypt later’ with the assumption that even though they don’t have the ability to break those cryptographic algorithms now, once they get hold of a quantum computer, they will so that they can steal that data later. So it’s important to think about this now.

And then agentic AI: so this one has come up relatively recently. You might’ve seen a press release in the news from Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal who have announced agentic solutions. Now the definition here is thinking about this from the service provider’s perspective. So it could mean approving transactions, flagging fraud, or customers, all in real time.

AI The payment brands are thinking about this and the context of consumers using agentic AI to make purchases. So you can find your perfect sweater using agentic AI. And consumers have the control over when the payment gets made, how much is the maximum they’re willing to pay. So it can be thought about from two different directions and certainly is being thought about from two different directions by the industry today. Some technical details: it’s built on the token frameworks so that you can identify when a specific AI bot makes a transaction. You’ll know it’s made by that specific agent. And I’m still learning about it, but I do have a lot of questions about how this will impact card processing rules — card present versus card not present. Did the consumer actually make that transaction? Is this going to impact chargebacks? There’s a whole lot of things to think about as it relates to the processing rules that the payment industry is so familiar with today and how they evolved to accommodate any positive agentic AI type products and services.

[Slide #9 – The Future] So to summarize, really the convergence of identity and payments, digital identities will be bound to payment credentials for a privacy preserving, secure, and convenient checkout experience both in store and online. And I think that’s the biggest takeaway that I have as I see these themes bubbling around in my world and how things are evolving in the real world. Card holders will expect a simplified user experience. One tap does everything and AI will continue to evolve, of course it will, and both from a threat and a solution perspective. So we have to be aware of the threats that come from AI and we have to be aware of how we can use AI to find a solution, to address some of the challenges in the industry.

[Slide #10 – Secure Technology Alliance] And then I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about who we are very, very quickly. Shameless plug, so we started out 30 years ago talking about the interoperability of ATMs. And then over time, as smart cards rose to prominence, not just in the payments’ industry but as part of access control, particularly in the government, it evolved into the Smart Card Forum and subsequently the Smart Card Alliance to really address aspects of access control and what the government was doing specifically around using smart cards in their infrastructure. And then of course, EMV came to the U.S. and the organization evolved into the EMV Migration Forum to really address some of the unique challenges that the U.S. had, in terms of migrating to chip. If you were around at the time, you’re probably aware that at the same time that EMV was being deployed, there were also regulations coming down that required debit routing specifics that EMV didn’t accommodate. So these were the types of initiatives that the EMV Migration talked about to collectively solve across all participants in the ecosystem to make sure that there was an implementable solution for all. And now that evolved into the U.S. Payments Forum, which is where we currently live, and the Identity and Access Forum, which started up about three years ago and has taken on its own unique life. And so both of our forums really focus on solving deployment challenges, providing feedback, and education, looking at what standards organizations are doing and figuring out how that plays into the payments ecosystem and making sure that we have opportunities to educate and network within our own organization.

[Slide #11 – Enabling the Future] And so here you see a graphic of how it all works together. I see these two circles becoming closer and closer and closer as we move forward, as we talk more about digital identities and how that plays into the payments’ ecosystem.

[Slide #12 – A Member-led Organization] Here’s our NASCAR slide. You can see there are a number of our key players here that are part of the organization. What we are proud of is the fact that we have the global networks, we have merchants, we have issuers, we have processors, we have solutions providers. We have people from all aspects to provide a really broad perspective on the payments industry, and now the identity industry, and how we can bring those together. And that is everything I had.

[Slide #13 – Secure Tech. Alliance – Thank You] If you are interested in learning more about us or interested in membership, there’s a QR code here which points directly to the membership application. You can see how much it costs. There’s a URL here that will point you to our main website, which talks about everything that we’re doing. We do have some upcoming events. We have a member-only folk education series in the summer talking about things like agentic payments and about tokenization and other aspects of the business.

We also have meetings coming up, in-person meetings, for both the identity and the payment sides of the business. And then our next Identity and Payment Summit will be in early March in Houston next year. We haven’t yet announced it, but we will be doing so soon. So please keep an eye out. And if you do have interest and the time, please come join us. We’d love to see you there.

So Ed, I’ll hand it back to you. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to your audience and I’d love to hear responses, reactions, thoughts from anybody that you have.

Ed Collupy:

Excellent. Thank you so much, Christina. I really appreciate you sharing the trends you’re seeing and your perspective. Certainly digital identity and the convergence with payments will play a part in the future of retailing. But given the number of use cases for the convenience/mobility industry, I believe we should be leading the way just as we did with, pay-at-the-pump.

Consumer Experience Christina, your comments that with digital credentials you need to be thinking about the person will be key to delivering a successful and distinct consumer experience. It sounds to me that customer identity is becoming a critical component of retail and hospitality customer experiences, and the organizations that invest in getting it right will be better positioned for growth. The outcomes — more efficient payments, stronger loyalty, personalization, additional customer data — will, as I read recently, unlock these moments when retailers “treat customer identity as a strategic part of their tech stack and not just a login box.”

The use cases tell the story of the many possibilities of how thinking beyond payments will be crucial to achieving a return on investment, meeting, and better yet, exceeding expectations your customers have, along with the thoughtful planning regarding implementation given the fraud threats and continued tech advancements.

Digital Infrastructure In our past CTVG meetings, we’ve brought up many of the considerations that the future of payments brings forth as well. Although we’ve discussed AI, point-of-sale systems, security, advancing motor vehicles, and the overall future of retail technology at our meetings, with digital credentials there’s even more to consider. Although I wonder when we’ll ever get to a better frictionless place at checkout, a streamlined dashboard consumer experience in our cars and some adoption of standards to help reduce differences that states may introduce. What I’m hearing is that it lies with digital identity.

Another organization, the Identity Defined Security Alliance, found in a recent study that more than half of organizations’ members see managing and securing digital identifications as one of their top three priorities. And clearly some in our industry are not just thinking about it. Erin Graziosi, our Robinson Oil/Rotten Robbie CTVG member, who’s unable to be with us and in her words, “bummed out,” about missing today’s discussion, shared with me this week that, “We are just rolling out TruAge at all our locations to take digital IDs. It will be interesting to watch that. I think one thing with the digital payments we’d like to see changed is that I believe currently it is a card-not-present transaction, which means more fraud liability on the retailer. It would be nice if this was counted as a card-present transaction. I see more and more people paying with watches and phones versus cards and cash.” Thanks Erin for sharing that with us.

And to keep the discussion going, where does tech like digital identity, mobile driver’s license, and digital wallets sit on each of your roadmaps? What do you think about what you just heard and learned and what challenges and opportunities do you see? Ray Huff, I saw your hand go up just as Christina wrapped up, so why don’t you go first?

Raymond Huff:

Thanks. Hi everybody. Christina, I saw your map of everybody that was involved, but I don’t think I saw NACS or TruAge on there. Are you familiar with them?

Christina Hulka:

I am. And they’re not involved with the work that we are doing as of today, no.

Raymond Huff:

Interesting. Have they made any reach out to you or contact or anything like that? I could sort of push on this side because it sounds like you have the momentum. And versus us going two different paths, we should be putting things together, I think.

Christina Hulka:

Yes, that would be great. I would really appreciate that, Ray. I know that the people that are very focused on the MDLs in our organization, they do have contacts at TruAge.

Raymond Huff:

I’ll get the president to reach out to you if I can get your email address. I do believe California adopted the TruAge system as well as several European companies have also adopted what TruAge has done. So it looks like there’s two different divergent paths going there, and that’s going to be problematic for us as retailers, I think.

Christina Hulka:

Yes, I’m not an expert, but I do believe that there is some synergy between what we’re doing and TruAge. I think that there’s the opportunity to use TruAge for that age verification piece. The mobile driver’s license extends far beyond that, as you saw in the different use cases. I think what’s going to be interesting and potentially impactful for you is how legislation might evolve around mobile driver’s licenses in the future and where it becomes that more recognized document. But that still, obviously, would be wild speculation to even talk about that right now. I’m not aware of anything in the works, but for us the priorities are the multiple use cases that the MDL has.

Raymond Huff:

Well, I can’t speak for TruAge directly, but I know that California is working directly with them for mobile driver’s license and integrating the whole thing as one.

Christina Hulka:

Yes, that makes sense.

Raymond Huff:

Okay. Thank you. I thought it was a good presentation, by the way. Thank you.

Christina Hulka:

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Raymond Huff:

Back to you, Ed.

Ed Collupy:

Hi Roy, go ahead.

Roy Strasburger:

All right, Christina, excellent presentation. Thank you very much. And Ed, I think that you touched on a couple of things as well, in regard to the rollout opportunities with this technology because retailers are going to need some type of hardware compliance and, as we talked about, being able to implement these things in the stores.

But I think that what’s going to be really interesting is that, as opposed to pay-at-the-pump technology, this technology is something that’s much broader across multiple industries. It is not just gasoline-oriented, for example. This applies to every bar, every place that sells alcohol, every place that sells cigarettes, outside of our channel. And I would think that there would be some real motivation, and I would hope cost savings on equipment, just because of the size of rollout, that would help us to implement this more quickly. And so Christina, do you have any thoughts on that, on how that might play out?

Christina Hulka:

Yes, I think that’s an interesting point. I think today we hear a lot of people, certainly on the retail side of things, saying, “Well, what’s really in it for me? Can I justify the cost of doing a rollout today? Does this really speed up the throughput of customers?” But then I think what is likely to happen is we will see some kind of regulatory attention to this in the future, and we will see economies of scale as the thought leaders start to deploy and pilot this type of technology.

So I think today we’re probably in that situation where there’s not really a strong return on investment for anybody other than those who like to position themselves as early adopters and looking to be the innovators, but over time, I think we will start to realize the value. As I talked about in my presentation, having the situations where you can present in one tap, you can do all of the things you need to do, like verify your age, add or use your loyalty points, as well as make the payment, they’re the things that are going to be the game changers that people are going to start seeing the value to and the return on investment for. A perfect storm, I think.

Ed Collupy:

Yes. Thank you. Sanjit, I found some notes today where Varish [Goyal] talked about you folks moving ahead with more mobile payment technology and those types of things. And I’m wondering if anything has been done. It was a note back from earlier in the year, so six months back. Has anything evolved on that front that you’re doing new on mobile payments or payments in general that fit with today’s discussion? Sanjit, we just lost you so let me jump to somebody else for a moment.

Janeth, when I had the preview of Christina’s presentation and got to see the NASCAR slide, I saw the Circle K logo there, so you folks must be thinking ahead as always. Wonder where you are thinking relative to digital identity.

Janeth Falcon:

Strategy Sure. Yes. So for this year we’re looking to do some exploratory [payments] pilots. We’re dependent upon a software upgrade for one of them. We do have in our roadmap to integrate payments in our mobile app, but that’s not something we’re looking to do in the short-term.

Ed Collupy:

And is there a general feeling that this is just a continual evolution of where payments are headed and getting a leg up and getting experiences under your belt? Or are there other drivers, kind of to Roy’s point, of where you invest in these things, how do you get a return?

Janeth Falcon:

Well, that’s the thing. So given the number of stores we have, we have to have a solution that can cut across all our stores in North America. So we need to have our technology partners be able to support the solutions for us to have critical mass to be able to deploy that type of technology. And we need to understand the return on investment. So I think right now it’s early days and we’re just going to monitor and see, wait and see.

Ed Collupy:

Thanks. I appreciate you sharing where you’re headed. And I know Christina was excited to know that you folks had joined as well. So Sanjit, now that you are back, let’s hear from you.

Sanjit Bajimaya:

Payment Systems Yes. Got your question. So we’re still in the works on the back of the thing right now. We haven’t deployed any payments to the consumer side, but yes, a lot of things are still in the works right now. The biggest challenge I think we have at the c-store is there’s a unified payment on the consumer front, but there’s no standard or unification on the back of the house. For example, I’ll just take an example of a store. If you visit a store, there’s like five or six solutions providers. There’s one for pumps. There might be separate for car wash. There might be one for EV chargers or for foodservice, you’re using a separate payment network.

So now when you bring all those things in the back of your house with different settlement processes, different type of data elements they’re providing, which is not standard, it’s a nightmare on the back of the house, like the accounting side of the day-to-day work. So we’re trying to see if there’s some kind of standard work being done on that part of the process.

Ed Collupy:

Sanjit, I think that’s a pitch for maybe another opportunity for U.S. Payments Forum to be working towards standardization of what gets delivered back to a merchant from a variety of different providers. Is there any work being done on that front that you’re aware of?

Christina Hulka:

Not specifically that I’m aware of, but I can take it back. Sanjit, feel free to come along and suggest it. We’ll work on it for you.

Sanjit Bajimaya:

Yes. Thank you.

Ed Collupy:

Steve Evans, go ahead.

Steve Evans:

When I think about the way as a consumer I approach any store, at this point, it’s almost like just taking out my card is the worst thing ever. I’ve gone all Apple, all digital wallet and will go to places that accept that form of payment. I think about my teenagers, my older teenagers, my 20-somethings, they don’t even bother bringing their wallet. They bring a phone and a license and that’s it, and they’re looking to dump their wallet as soon as they can.

Strategy So at Haffner’s, we’re trying to reflect that in our loyalty push and really try to embrace the digital wallet concept and not do anything earth-shattering but simply be ready and accept it because so many of our consumers are moving to that’s their preferred form. Between that and identity, it’s much like Christina is saying, it’s going to become one unit, one tap, it’s my digital identity and I can pay for it and you can know my medical history. I mean, that’s where we’re going. So we’re trying to stay on the forefront of the payment side with the digital wallet concept.

Ed Collupy:

You’re using that as a steppingstone?

Steve Evans:

Yes. Absolutely. We plan on staying with it.

Ed Collupy:

Ray Huff?

Raymond Huff:

We’re seeing the same thing, especially in Hawaii where people don’t have cash, they don’t have a wallet. They will have their phone or their watch and they expect you to be able to use that. Otherwise, they’ll leave the product right there on the shelf. We really do need to make sure that we’re ready to handle the transaction because that’s just the payment piece. But the loyalty piece that you were talking about and the age verification piece, all of that needs to really be in one app.

Ed Collupy:

Christina, I noticed that one of your slides you showed us on the trust factor. And to me, banks were the highest organization that people trust, but that was less than 50% of us. So less than 50% of us trust anybody on this digital identity front. What can or should retailers be doing to build that trust?

Christina Hulka:

Well, I think it’s more coming from who owns that wallet, who manages that wallet on your behalf as a consumer. The merchants, the retailers already have the trust. If they have the loyal consumers, the consumers have chosen that brand specifically. If they have loyalty points, there’s a reason why they have loyalty points. So I think it’s on the flip side. It’s who do you trust to manage your wallet with all of your credentials, your sensitive information inside it? And that’s where that slide comes in. I mean, the least amount of people trust the government. The most amount of people trusted the banks. But when I think about it personally, I’m not sure I trust any of those entities either and would I want Google or Apple to do it? Not really either.

So I think that’s why the industry has a challenge today — who is it that we trust the most to manage our credentials? And that’s on the flip side to the retailer who already has built that trust. So that’s a dilemma I think that we have to think about and address very carefully because if something happens that breaches that trust in whoever it is who holds our information, that’s catastrophic.

Ed Collupy:

Got it. Roy?

Roy Strasburger:

Just as a corollary to that, and not that I expect Apple or Google to go bankrupt anytime soon, but it got me thinking about the 23andMe debacle of when they went into bankruptcy and then all of a sudden everybody was very concerned about their genetic information that they, as a private entity, were holding and what was going to happen to it. So the question of safeguards, the question of how you lock down all that information, becomes more and more relevant. And even just over the last few weeks there’s been more discussion about airlines selling personal data to the government. It’s keeping tabs on all of this and wondering: who do you trust at the end of the day? Are we going to go back to exchanging shells and rocks as a bartering systems for some type of trusted transaction, I suppose?

Christina Hulka:

Digital Infrastructure I mean, I also think about, as you’re talking, Roy, what comes to my mind, there’s a lot of conversations, and I’m by no means an expert, about distributed identity using the blockchain and self-sovereign identity where you are the only person that can access your information. It’s distributed. It’s cryptographically signed. But I still think, and again I reiterate, I am not an expert on this topic specifically, but you still have to store it somewhere to be able to use it. You have to access it through, in my case, an iPhone to be able to make that transaction. So I think there are conversations happening on that subject. How it will all play out, I don’t have a clear perspective on it yet.

Ed Collupy:

Jeff Carpenter, going back to Christina’s map, New York was lit up green as a state that has mobile driver’s license in some manner, shape or form at this point. Have you run into those as a means of customers showing who they are and the like?

Jeff Carpenter:

Interestingly, our director of operations and I had a conversation about that this week. We really haven’t seen it utilized as of yet. But as you know, New York State is certainly looking to lead with that. And we also have some additional laws we see popping up surrounding restricted products, not only at the state level, but legislation within smaller municipalities that we’re seeing pop up, which could also influence the use of that technology. And thinking about our state association, I know that at one point I had reached out to them to look at legislation to maybe reword or re-verbalize what even the ID’ing laws are to support the utilization of that tech at the register where maybe you have requirements of physical possession of the ID in reviewing it and looking at the date of birth and that it matches the individual standing in front of you. But as far as utilization in the stores, to my knowledge, we haven’t seen any yet.

Ed Collupy:

Sharif, you’re in New York as well, I believe. How about you?

Sharif Jamal:

We haven’t started doing anything with any digital ID’ing yet. It’s definitely something that we’re interested in learning more about and exploring in the future, but as far as digital payment, we’re active with that, with the Apple Pay and stuff, and I think there’s more to come. I think we’ll be exploring more payment solutions in our loyalty app as well.

Ed Collupy:

And are customers showing their digital mobile license on their phones as a way of age verification today in your store?

Sharif Jamal:

They’re coming in, but it’s very few times and the staff really haven’t been trained to accept them yet. So at this point we’re still going with physical IDs.

Ed Collupy:

Got it. Ray Huff?

Raymond Huff:

I think this comment may be germane. Tell me if it’s not. I was just with NACS for Day on the Hill and before Congress and all on Wednesday. And coming back to the airport, there are now three lines. There’s a CLEAR line. There’s a TSA Pre line. And there is a ‘You are your ID’ and that’s under TSA. And I’m like, “Well, how are those people getting through so fast?” They’re like, “Well, they are their ID. They don’t have to pull anything out,” and so forth. So I showed them my TSA Pre thing and they’re like, “Oh, no. You have it. It’s a little green mark that’s on your thing.” It took all of one second to go through that line and nobody was in it because the line was moving that fast. So I share that because I was the ID. I mean, they came up. The guy looked at me, said, “Okay. You’re good.” That was it. Nothing. No stop.

Myra Kressner:

But, Ray, did you still have to look into the camera and he was looking at the screen and this happened in a matter of two seconds?

Raymond Huff:

Yes. Less than that because as I walked up, he was looking at me already with the camera.

Myra Kressner:

Okay. So you were somehow already in his image?

Raymond Huff:

Yes. As the people are walking through, they’re not asking you to stop, look at the camera like they did with the other one. They’re just like, “Okay. You’re good.” But yes, there was a camera there, so clearly they saw me. And when I get off the boat [from vacation] it’s very similar where they’re like, “Okay, you’re out of here. You’re out of here.” But that is the camera where they’re doing the facial recognition before you even get to the spot. So you are the ID, and I think that’s where we ultimately are heading.

Ed Collupy:

Does anyone among our members on here today have a mobile driver’s license? Besides Christina and Ray?

Raymond Huff:

Yes, I have one. If you get your regular driver’s license, at the same time, you can opt to have the mobile driver’s license verified on your phone. I’ve never had to use it, and I think someone else said they’ve never used it. Have you used it, Christina?

Christina Hulka:

No. I’ve had it for a year and I’ve yet to find a place to use it.

Ed Collupy:

And Jeff, you raised your hand to say you had one?

Jeff Carpenter:

Yes. I downloaded it about 20 minutes ago as we were talking about it. Very seamless process.

Ed Collupy:

Amazing what these conversations provoke. Was it easy?

Jeff Carpenter:

Quite easy, and they still had stored the color photograph of my black and white as it appeared on my license.

Ed Collupy:

Anybody else?

Raymond Huff:

Jeff, did you have to take a picture of yourself to send it to them?

Jeff Carpenter:

I had to take a picture of the front and back of my existing license, and then it wanted a selfie, facial recognition. But that was above and beyond the existing facial recognition for Apple as required of the iPhone.

Raymond Huff:

That’s correct. I had to do the same thing, front and back and then a picture of me and then boom, the license came down.

Jeff Carpenter:

Yep. Took about 60 seconds.

Donnie Rhoads:

Is this in your Apple Wallet once you download the app? Do you have to open the app?

Jeff Carpenter:

No.

Donnie Rhoads:

If you’re ever going to use your ID, your digital one, do you have to open the app every time? Or is it something that can be maybe triggered by the tap technology?

Jeff Carpenter:

Not to my knowledge.

Raymond Huff:

Donnie, I wish I could say the answer to that. I’ve never had to use it, so I don’t know.

Jeff Carpenter:

Everything that I briefly read on it stated that it is within the mID (mobile ID) app.

Christina Hulka:

You can add it to your Apple Wallet. I don’t think you can just tap it. I think you’d have to actually open the wallet to show it. But in some states…again, I can speak from my own experience…in California, there’s also an app that you can download, which is managed by the California DMV. That’s where I started. I kept running into functionality issues with it, so I ended up adding it to my Apple Wallet as a backup. But like Ray, I’ve never used it. It’s sort of sitting in my wallet waiting for an opportunity.

Ed Collupy:

Roy Austin, you added something in the chat about Colorado. What Colorado’s doing?

Roy Austin:

When I lived in Colorado, you had to open the Colorado Drive app and it was a separate app. And any time it updated, it lost your ID and you had to re-add it with the steps that Ray was discussing every single time. It was frustrating, so I gave up on it.

Raymond Huff:

They fixed that now, finally.

Roy Austin:

Okay.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Any other questions for Christina or thoughts?

One that’s come to mind to me…and Jason actually, you are on my mind. So companies like yours, Jason, and you can ask your question and add your comment as well, but companies like yours, Steve’s, and I bet Roy Austin’s, take payments through a portal and even many people are doing pay ahead and order ahead in foodservice-type things. So I’m wondering if you’ve all thought about digital identity online somehow? Has that been thought through? But Jason, go ahead with your comments and then maybe we’ll come back to that.

Jason Collins:

Payment Systems Well, I’ve listened to everybody on here. All I’m hearing is the need to standardize. The one common thing we all have is a physical ID. So when somebody goes to our location and they buy beer, cigarettes, any age-restrictive item, our cashiers, employees, they know to look for an ID. So now you have all these mobile IDs and this ID and that ID and it’s in Apple Wallet, Google Wallet. So we need some standardization to help assist the employees at the store level for all this. It’s the same with payments. There’re so many different types of payments accepted everywhere now. It’s hard to keep track of it at the site level when you’re hiring somebody off the street. Those are my biggest takeaways here is just the need to standardize and be the same everywhere.

Ed Collupy:

Steve Morris, you have not stopped shaking your head since Jason started there, so let’s hear from you.

Steve Morris:

I think he’s right. The standardization. In our industry we see such a high number of out-of-state or out-of-town IDs that it just becomes problematic of how do we train a staff? And then the standardization within there…does this allow for and help us as we look at the self-checkout, as we look at the other different checkouts or just a completely self-service kiosk, or the folks at Juxta (provides autonomous, unmanned micro-retail stores called Nomads) and what they’re doing with the unmanned stores themselves or Amazon Go, how does that work? The answer is exactly what he was just saying. It’s making sure that it’s the same everywhere and that we’re getting all the same stuff.

I kept thinking about my airport experiences of using CLEAR technology or using the CLEAR to get in through PreCheck or, depending on the TSA, using their video identification. I see a number of people opt out of that because they’re just freaked out by Big Brother. Even if it’s standardized, what’s the adoption? Well, there’s certainly going to be a percentage of folks that just don’t want it. And then how do we train and how do we operate in that scenario? So there’s hurdles aplenty, but the technology of it certainly has advantages to help us operationally, but we have a lot of hurdles in front of it.

Ed Collupy:

Bill Miller or Robert Green, any thoughts on this topic relative to how you see the point-of-sale industry playing into it?

Robert Green:

It’s interesting. Just from a perspective of IDs and driver’s license scanning, et cetera, we get these sorts of questions all the time about capabilities and being able to do this. It definitely is a challenge because of this lack of conformity or lack of standards across the industries that we deal with, right? Because for us, it’s not just convenience store, it’s grocery, it’s retail, et cetera, so we see it in even different industries. So I don’t have any words of wisdom other than, yes, it’s a challenge that we face all the time, and every different customer seems to have a different sort of requirements that we just don’t have the ability to leverage universal standards.

And then payments obviously are constantly evolving. I certainly agree and applaud Christina’s concept of having more of a universal ID and plan, and I think we would greatly applaud that just from a ubiquity perspective, but it’s a challenge. Just constant, so I don’t have any words of wisdom other than, yeah, we experience this every day.

Ed Collupy:

And are you seeing any other retail segments pushing for digital identity more than others?

Robert Green:

No. C-store is the predominant in this space. The grocers that we deal with, they kind of deal with whatever is available. This isn’t as predominant for them as the c-store space, but it’s a real problem for them.

Ed Collupy:

Got it.

Bill Ridge, what are your thoughts? You always have some great thoughts for us.

Bill Ridge:

Well, you’re going to hear the same thought, one of those thoughts being we’re branded and pretty much have our hands tied as far as payment goes to that. I will say this though, and different than what I usually say is…we’re branded Shell and Exxon…I do think they’ve done a good job on payment. We can use pay-at-the-pump with our phones, you can use Apple Pay, and that’s what the majority of our people want, right? Some contactless way. Looking back on everything, why did we ever go to a card with a chip in it? For me personally, it’s like why didn’t we just skip all that and go straight to mobile because putting that in the pump obviously costs us a lot of money? Then not a year later, it was like, “Okay, we got to do mobile.”

I understand it, but it was very frustrating. I’ll also make the comment that ‘you are going to be your ID’. We have DVRs now in our stores and it works now. I can set it up so that if a person walks in, it’ll immediately notify me that they’ve walked in the store. I can feed it a picture of someone that’s never been in the store, and it’ll go back and find every clip with that person that’s been in it for the police.

Digital Infrastructure Payment Systems So I think what’s going to happen eventually is somehow you register yourself. That’s a lot of faces if it’s a national thing. But if you register yourself with something and maybe even that works with your loyalty, then it registers you in your stores, and then you can have access to that database, then your store is going to know that you walked in the store. With that, if it could interface with the POS systems, the POS would know you’re already there. So something like that. I do think it’s going to be ‘you are your ID’ eventually. Now when do we get there, I’m not sure about that.

But again, this is great conversation. Even from a payment side, and I’ve said it before just because of food and things like that, I’ve tried to split off and even looking at different foodservices, but we still have to use their payment network because we’re contractually obligated to use their payment network. So is Toast going to work with the Shell network? Not right now.

It’d be nice if the payment networks like Shell and Exxon opened up their network so that other people could interface with it, whether it be Toast or whoever else, just like I do with authorized.net or whoever I use for my payment processor. So it’d be nice if they did that, but those things take a long time in our atmosphere, so we’re kind of at the mercy of the brand. But I do think the DVR and identity are going to play a big piece going forward just because there’s a lot of that and that’s progressing very quickly right now.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. And you got a hand clap from Robert Green there.

Bill Ridge:

Thank you.

Ed Collupy:

Steve Morris.

Steve Morris:

Loyalty Programs Just as Bill was talking about that, I had been thinking about the loyalty implications of that. That only works if we can tie everything into it. So to the point of ‘you are your identity’, but how ‘s that linked to payment ID verification for security, loyalty, etc.? I’m thinking about our big national brands, so we’re 76-branded, and we’re using KRS Systems as a loyalty, the adoption there is slow, but it’s there. That’s the bigger network or patron points or whatever that may be of these big conglomerates of them tying in with American Express and then, “Hey, I can put these three things in here.” That may help me as a retailer swallow the cost coming in with the additional equipment infrastructure that needs to happen to make this happen. It’s when everybody’s pulling the same direction on the oars.

I was right with Bill, I was immediately thinking about loyalty implications. He knows when a customer walks in the store, same thing. Bluetooth, near-field technology is two decades old from when that first came out. That from a marketing standpoint is where we were headed. And I don’t know if I’ve shared it with this group before, but the marketing firm, I can’t remember their name now, but they did the Grand Central Station in New York. And they were using that technology, and they were reading your IP, the near-field, and they were using that IP, your IP and your browser history, to then customize ads, digital ads that then showed to Steve as I walked by down Grand Central Station, and it changed for the person behind me, et cetera, and it was that kind level of specificity around the marketing standpoint. This with a loyalty payment and ID and security ID all in one, I’m in. I’m in for that. I’ll spend Strasburger’s money, put that in my store all day long.

Ed Collupy:

There you go.

Jason, you made the comment about hands being tied due to the [fuel] brands. Are they not moving fast enough on this front from your perspective, not talking about it, or just more of the same?

Jason Collins:

Payment Systems Not moving fast enough. But back to my comment on the standards, it would help if everybody was the same, all brands were the same, all processors, our forms of payment, our mobile wallets, tap and pay, standard. So our brand might do this, and it might take this version of software to get there. So now you’re constantly doing software upgrades to get to a place where you’re accepting the same form of payment that another brand is already offering that’s across the street from you. So it gets frustrating after a while. If your competitor is doing it, you can’t based on the brand and how fast they move.

Ed Collupy:

Thank you for chiming in there.

And Steve Morris, thanks for adding in that your view is that the major oil security teams are going to take forever moving forward with this as well. Kind of a reiteration from Robert on that as well, so thanks guys.

Robert Green:

CybersecurityYes, just dealing with lots of contract terms and stuff like that that we deal with. I do think that when you face the potential of all of these combined loyalty card, driver’s license, there’s a high potential impact for PII (personally identifiable information) concerns. It’s certainly from corporate attorneys, if you will. I get the benefit of the idea of this, and then put California in the mix and things get even more challenging, right? But I think we’ll all work through it, but I do think that it’s going to be a bumpy PII road, certainly kind of from our perspective, because from a point-of-sale vendor, we often have to have two forms of identifying information for people, maybe phone number and address, things like that, right? So it just gets very challenging. It really takes that sort of data and moves it more into kind of almost cardholder data category.

So anyway, just certain challenges.

Ed Collupy:

Christina, I saw you nodding and agreeing on this. Any thoughts on this whole PII?

Christina Hulka:

I think that there’s a lot of focus on privacy-preserving principles as we build these solutions. So the intent is to make sure that we do have those built into the ultimate solutions. I think there is a challenge with perception. There is a challenge we are going to have to work through the concerns that both consumers and corporate lawyers and security teams are all going to express to really kind of be able to evolve a true privacy-preserving solution.

I think there’s awareness there for those people that are thinking about these things from a standardization perspective, from a specification perspective, from a certification perspective to ensure the interoperability. It’s just addressing the challenges of those people that are ultimately going to be the end users and those people that have to implement further down the line.

Ed Collupy:

Got it.

Robert Hampton, you had your hand up.

Robert Hampton:

Yes, this is great conversation, and a lot of good points are being made. One thing I would point back to, and I think, I can’t remember if it was Bill mentioned or not, but being able to identify someone through video specifically. It would be really nice to have that so you can just walk in, pay, things like that. But the PII aspect of that, I’ve seen firsthand various products that had to be taken out of a store. One, I’ll mention, was Blue Line Technologies, had to be taken out of stores in the Pacific Northwest because of the backlash from identification of individuals and they weren’t even being identified by name. It was just the fact that video was used for these individuals was a non-starter. The product had to be taken out, which was a great product. So there’s things like that.

The other thing, and from a technologist and innovator, I support all this stuff, but the concern from my perspective is, and we touched on it briefly, who is managing this data for us all? And are they monetizing it? And what control do we have over it? And then somebody mentioned the 23andMe. There’s always going to be a concern of the data being leaked and what happens there.

Somebody else said, “I think we’ll work through it,” and I think we will over time, but there’s just a lot of things to consider. And there’s a lot of advantages, looking forward, but it’s just going to take time to work through all these things.

Ed Collupy:

Very good.

Digital Infrastructure CybersecurityI noticed, again, on Christina’s map that she presented that two states who are often on opposite sides of things, so Massachusetts, Abhi, and Texas, Rance, are not moving or haven’t made much progress on the mobile driver’s license front at this point. Do you guys have any perspective as to why the states you’re in are lagging? Rance?

Rance Wells:

I guess sometimes the best go last. Just kidding. In Texas, we’re making everything that has any THC in it illegal, statewide, so we’re going backwards on a few things, right? I don’t know why Texas is not moving forward with that. The future is not evenly distributed, for sure. And maybe for a good reason on some of this, right? You only have one true ID, right? And that’s something people are concerned about. Texas, this last year, in 2024, did pass a data privacy law. It’s kind of vague, it’s not real detailed, but through all these talks, I remember when we had all the mobile wallet people, and everybody was like, “Oh, do this, do that,” they were working with all the different point-of-sale vendors, and then Google was kind of doing some stuff. Then Apple came out with a mobile wallet and then everybody started taking it, right? They were the big dog that made everybody move.

You’re going to see Meta, you’re going to see Alphabet, you’re going to see Apple. One of these people is going to do something. Amazon has the palm reading stuff that uses the NFC chip or uses NFC. You can read your palm and do that. That really never caught fire.

NOTE – NFC: Near-field Communication: a short-range wireless technology that allows devices to communicate with each other when they are brought close together, usually within a few centimeters. NFC enables various functions like contactless payments, data sharing, and connecting to other devices.

I don’t know how far this will go. Innovation’s going to outpace regulation, and then they’re going to regulate us, right? And tell us, “Oh, you can’t do that or do this.” Or sometimes the cat’s out of the bag and they just make it happen. I don’t see the future of payments at this time. I just know everyone wants to get paid that’s involved in payments, right? Visa doesn’t want to go away, all the credit card companies want to get their money, all the technology companies want you to use their stuff so they get paid. I don’t see a clear path ahead when it comes to the future of payments.

Roy Strasburger:

And Rance, as a fellow Texan, I’ll jump in and say that first of all, our state legislature only meets for six weeks every two years. So they get more wrapped up in things like school voucher bills and bathroom equality bills as opposed to actually doing things like this.

The other thing is, if you look at the map, generally speaking, a lot of the conservative states are the ones who haven’t adopted or are in the orange category. I think there’s some individual rights and privacy data issues involved as far as a political leaning in having the will to do it.

Ed Collupy:

Which is what hit me when I saw the map. But then I saw my own state and Abhi’s state of Massachusetts, so Abhi, you heard anything on this front?

Abhi Patel:

Not really. And even if you hear, I don’t know what is the real advantage as a retailer, as everybody’s having the same challenge that, yes, state comes up with this, but really, how many consumers are trusting and rolling in that? And then the challenge on our side is what technology do we use? What investment do we need? Even a simple thing like training. So, not clear on this.

Ed Collupy:

Interesting. Very good. Steve Morris?

Steve Morris:

Yes, I’ll add Minnesota, in our infinite wisdom, we were one of the last, if not the last state to adopt the federal requirement for Real ID. So we have privacy issues, I don’t know, it’s a little live-free, well, not cheaply because it’s not cheap, but we have a nanny stage concern. And I’ll say this too, is that when I worked for a large oil company with a pretty well-known loyalty program, Minnesota, consistently out of all the states that they operated, Minnesota consistently was the worst with registered cards, registered users because residents didn’t want to give up their phone number or give up a ten-digit number, they didn’t want that link. So Real ID being the most recent of it, we literally just passed that effective June 1st, the requirement, we were one of the last, I can’t imagine that we will be anywhere near this in the next 10 years. No appetite.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. One other thought that has crossed my mind as we’ve been talking about this and just digital identity is that I’ve seen more and more at self-checkout where your image shows up on the screen, and I know that’s a risk mitigator type tactic. Has anyone implemented self-checkout with that technology, with the consumer’s image in front of them? And what type of reaction are you getting from that?

Steve Morris:

No, and I thought, as the home of Target, I think Target just, maybe it was local, I don’t know if it was national or not, but Target came out and said that those aren’t retained anywhere. It’s not stored; it’s not DVR’d. Target basically said it’s just like the mirror on the ATM. Doesn’t really do anything.

Ed Collupy:

Anybody else? Has anybody implemented anything like that?

Raymond Huff:

We have two stores that are completely unmanned behind security. And we film people constantly. And if they have a problem, they basically will take the product knowing that we’re going to call them the next day to get the payment. They’ve gotten used to the fact that they know that we know who they are, and we just match them up, call them, and they’re like, “Yeah, the point of sales didn’t work, I couldn’t figure it out, but I was hungry. So yeah, I’ll come down and pay now.” It is not a problem for us. So we’re not seeing any resistance on ours and we’re doing now, I think, about 2,000 transactions a day with that, and maybe we have to call six people or eight people a week.

Ed Collupy:

Very good.

Christina, do you have any questions for the team with us?

Christina Hulka:

Nothing specific. I think it’s a really interesting conversation. It’s a really great insight for me into convenience store specifics. I think obviously big picture from where I’m coming from, but some of the unique challenges I think are very interesting to hear about.

Ed Collupy:

Very good.

Anybody else with last-minute thoughts?

With that, as we look to wrap up today, I continue to be amazed at all the technology that the convenience/mobility industry has in front of itself. I know there are a lot of you that have a lot on your plates already yet there’s more to come as Christina laid out for us and as each of you chimed in regarding the “future of payments”. And you know what? We didn’t even cover the sunsetting of the penny.

So Christina, thanks again for sharing with CTVG first your combined thoughts from the conference earlier this year and laying out for us what the future holds. I’m going to pass off the wrap-up to Roy, but I want to wish all of you a wonderful summer season. If Cape Cod is on any of your road trip maps, please reach out. It would be great to share a lobster with you, and we’ll see you again on Friday, September 5th.

Roy, take it away.

Roy Strasburger:

Well, thank you.

Thank you, Ed. Great job in moderating as always. And thank you to everybody for participating.

Really thought-provoking presentation, Christina, and we appreciate all the work that you put into that and for joining us today.

So I just want to say thanks to everybody. The Vision Group Network would not be possible without you helping us provide information to people who want to learn about what the industry is doing, and your insights and perspectives are invaluable in helping other retailers become better retailers. And by doing so, we’re hoping that we’re improving the industry as a whole. So thank you very much.

Thanks to Myra as a co-founder. And on behalf of Eva as our other co-founder, we thank you and hope that everybody has a really good weekend. So take care and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Myra Kressner:

Before everyone leaves, I just want to say, as Roy said, we want to thank all of our retail members as well as our Ally Supporters, Invenco by GVR and GK. We could not do this without you as well. So sincere thanks to you on behalf of the Vision Group Network, as well as all of our other members.

Ed Collupy:

Thanks, everybody.